My mother, despite her obvious enjoyment when one of her children calls to talk, possesses a mysterious aversion to picking up the phone and calling one of us herself. In light of this, we have attempted to get her to use e-mail, which, we promised, would cost her nothing (she can use the community computer where she lives) and would be fun for her. This last promise has always been greeted with a cynical "Ha."
Gradually we have stopped bringing it up, except for the Hero, whose pledge it is to bring the miracle of technology to every living soul on earth. He continues to broach the subject with her by making such subtle comments as "So, are you ready to learn how to use e-mail today?" Finally, on our recent visit, she surprised everyone by agreeing.
We began by showing her the Google icon on the desktop. "Yeah, Google," she said. "What IS a Google, anyway?"
We immediately realized that, like Europeans and Native Americans meeting for the first time to discuss important matters of state -- such as how best to roast a turkey for a crowd -- this might be a little more complicated than we had thought.
We explained that she could use Google to type in search words, or a question. "Think of a question to ask," the Hero suggested.
"How about 'What color is my car?' " she offered, in an apparent confusion of search engines with the decidedly less technological, yet all-seeing, Magic 8 Ball.
"Maybe we should save search engines for another time," we suggested.
So we had her practice moving the mouse, which presented some difficulty, as there was very little space to move the mouse on the pull-out desk ledge. She approached the mouse gingerly, cupping two fingers around the back edge and moving it very cautiously. The cursor moved slowly on the screen, ever so slowly, all six of our eyes fixed on it, willing it to move faster, faster, PLEASE move faster, and when it finally reached the spot where we had told her to click -- about 45 minutes later -- she very carefully looked for the left click button on the mouse and clicked it, only to find that the cursor had inexplicably moved off her target, rendering her click ineffective. "It WAS in the right spot," she said, and looked accusingly at the mouse.
Finally we introduced her to Gmail, explaining that she would need to choose a login name and password to get an account -- her name, something that described her, etc.
"How about 'Prettywoman'?" she said.
"I'm pretty sure that one's already taken," the Hero said. "But it was a good one."
Finally, after some careful thought, she settled on her choices. Then came the task of trying to decipher and replicate the randomly generated code of numbers and letters to prove that we were actually humans. These markings look like something Alice might have encountered in Wonderland, and are no doubt some sort of intelligence test, which the Hero and I fail miserably whenever we attempt it ("Is that xjhcopt? Could be rmkbl626...").
If you get this code wrong, the computer gives you an even HARDER one, as if that is going to be any help. Finally, evidently taking pity on our obviously low intelligence, the computer gave us an extremely easy code along with this message: "If you can't get this one, you really are morons."
It took my mother a few reminders to not put any spaces in her login name and password, but eventually she seemed to enjoy this freedom of restraint, and when we finally progressed to writing the body of the e-mail her sentences looked like this: "HithisisMom.Areyoutwobehavingyourselves?"
The Hero sent her a test message to practice opening and reading her mail. "When you're done with it, you archive it," he said. She started to click on Archive.
"Whoa," I said.
I personally did not see the need for haste in moving anything out of the inbox. "You could just leave it where it is," I told her.
The Hero strongly disapproved of this, and felt that I was teaching her bad habits right from the start. "This is why you have fifteen thousand messages in your inbox," he said darkly.
She practiced logging in and out a few times and getting the mouse up to a slow cruise. When she had had enough for one day, we congratulated her on her achievements, and said that now we would expect to get some e-mails from her.
"Ha," she said, but it was a little less cynical this time.
Note: This may well be the last posting to mention the Queen Mum, for as soon as she masters e-mail she will no doubt demand to know how to access this blog, and, well, it might be better to find a new topic.
No comments:
Post a Comment